The minimum wage in Arizona is now $10 an hour after voters approved an increase last year. But it was a long contentious road to get there.
In that debate, many in the business community worried that the new law hurt work local business owners and force them to cut employees, and proponents argued that low-wage workers couldn’t make enough money to stay above the poverty line and needed a raise.
But one researcher wanted to know how raising the minimum wage affects workers’ lives in other ways.
Lindsey Bullinger of Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs wanted to know how making a higher minimum wage affects the health and well being of workers and their families.
So she looked at how making a higher minimum wage can affect something that we’ve been trying to reduce for decades — teen pregnancy.
The idea here is that having hopes for economic advancement in your future reduces teen pregnancy.
